Kurtenbach: Warriors assistant coach Dejan Milojević dead at 46 — “Decky” embodied what is great about the game

He was a big man with a big personality.

And his absence in the basketball world will prove massive.

Warriors assistant coach and Serbian basketball legend Dejan Milojević died Wednesday at age 46. He suffered a heart attack at a team dinner in Salt Lake City ahead of the Warriors’ now-postponed game against the Jazz.

Nicknamed the “Serbian Barkley,” Milojević was a three-time MVP of the Adriatic League while playing in his home country. As a coach, he turned Belgrade’s Mega Basket into a world-renowned NBA pipeline, with 11 players drafted into the league in eight years, including star pupil Nikola Jokić of the Denver Nuggets.

Milojević jumped to the NBA to join the Warriors’ coaching staff in 2021 and immediately proved instrumental in helping the Warriors win a title in that first season.

Nicknamed “Decky” by the Dubs, Milojević’s early focus with Golden State was to develop the team’s big men. Kevon Looney credited him for his breakout postseason in 2022.

Milojević was no-nonsense regarding basketball — he didn’t come all the way from Serbia to mess around — but you rarely caught him without a smile. He loved the game, yes, but he loved people, too. Behind the scenes, Warriors coach Steve Kerr’s mantra of joy above all was perfectly embodied by Milojević. He never sought attention — he was anything but a politician — but his passion for his job was infectious and unmissable. He was a hell of a player, but his true calling was as a teacher.

“Dejan was one of the most positive and beautiful human beings I have ever known, someone who brought joy and light to every single day with his passion and energy,” Kerr said in a statement released by the Warriors Wednesday.

Milojević carried a presence, too. He had a magnetism that helped him stand out in a league full of big men. And his word carried serious weight, too, even in his early days in America, when his English was still a work in progress. He was more than fluent in the language of basketball, though. As the NBA becomes increasingly worldly, and with more and more teams looking outside the American ranks, it seemed like it was only a matter of time before Milojević was tapped for a head coaching job in the league.

Your heart breaks for his wife, Natasa, and his two children, Nikola and Masa.

But anyone who had the good fortune to spend time with Milojević felt a solid punch to the gut when the news of his death, first reported by EuroBasket, came out Wednesday. Beyond being a great coach, he was a good and decent man — the kind we can’t afford to lose these days.

And now what? The Warriors, who spent countless hours with him every week, who loved him and everything he stood for, go and play basketball?

It seems so cruel.

In a Warriors season where so little has gone right, Milojević’s surprising passing transcends the bounce of a ball. Wins and losses feel so trivial now. I imagine that fact will remain for a long time to come.

How the Warriors move forward is anyone’s guess. Folks around the NBA know how to deal with trades, demotions, and firings — the realities of their strange and public profession. But death? That’s real, and it’s heavy. There’s little to no guidance for that.

And the harsh reality of the Warriors’ profession is that there will be little time — if any — to process something as traumatic as Milojević’s death.

Yes, the Warriors’ game against the Jazz on Wednesday night was understandably postponed. The team is in a daze. But as of publishing, the Warriors are still slated to face the Mavericks Friday night at Chase Center. How anyone close to Milojević can focus on basketball by then is beyond my comprehension.

At some point, the show will return. One can only hope for the Warriors that it’s no time soon.

But amid so many challenges and travails throughout the years, the Warriors now have to lean on their culture of joy, positivity, and camaraderie more than ever. Milojević was a vessel of all those characteristics. And when the time is right for the Warriors to push forward and honor the big man’s incredible legacy, one hopes they can collectively embody them, too.